


Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

by Dance_Elle_Dance



Category: Royal Pains
Genre: Dancing, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4672526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dance_Elle_Dance/pseuds/Dance_Elle_Dance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You have some serious sexual tension crackling over there with Evan R. Lawson." A conversation with Jill, and a dance with Evan prove that Miss Casey was right. (Originally posted on 7/26/10.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post of another Royal Pains fanfic. Some EvanDivya, of course, with some Divya and Jill friendship moments thrown in for good measure. Please enjoy!

Swanky parties in the Hamptons should be Divya's thing.

She should like getting dressed up in all her finest clothes, and parading about, talking to various high-end clients and patients for HankMed. She should like being able to show off her wealth, but…

Divya hated them.

She sighed as she sat down at the small table that was slightly off to the side, not in the center of everything. Frankly, right now she felt like being a bit incognito. It wasn't something she felt often, but she really just wanted to be alone at the expertly catered, decorated, and fancy party that she had been dragged to.

Leaning on her elbows and idly fiddling with the lemon slice perched precariously on the edge of her glass of water, she gazed out into the crowd around her.

The night air was cool and chilly against her bare arms, odd for the Hamptons at this time of year, but she digressed. Her eyes combed through the throng of people, and she felt a slight sigh building in her chest when she briefly caught a glimpse of Evan, leaning next to the bar and talking with some leggy blonde. To her surprise, he didn't look that interested, but he still had that smile on his face, while something about his eyes seemed off.

_Strange…_

Those blue, blue eyes looked her way and she felt herself flush for being caught staring. Divya turned her head away quickly, feeling like a girl in high school.

She hated the way that his eyes had a certain draw for her - big, clear, intelligent (despite all of his immature gestures) and just _intoxicating_. She couldn't help herself from taking a peek every now and then. More often than she'd like, she found herself staring at him. At his sharp eyes. At his full mouth. At the curve of his slender neck. At the scrawny muscle of his legs, the wiry build of his arms. She often wondered what was beneath all of those clothes, but usually it didn't get that far…

Divya stopped abruptly when she felt a tingling form in her stomach and shoot downward. This was _not_ the place _or_ the time for that, of all things. Really, it was never the place or time for that since she got the ring on her finger. Or even _before_ that. Evan was her coworker, and it should be completely inappropriate for her to even think about him like this.

The way that she felt attracted to him wasn't an understatement. Where she and Raj often lacked chemistry, she felt that with Evan, she had some kind of chemistry that she could never accomplish with her "arranged husband." And it infuriated her. Why did she have to feel this way about some guy she had only known for a short while, when her relationship with Raj seemed more forced than anything she'd ever been put through?

Divya sighed harshly, feeling herself developing a headache because of the train of her thoughts. This wasn't going to help anyone, thinking like this. She was doing this for her family, right? But is that a reason to throw away every possibility? Shouldn't her family want her to be happy, even if she rejected the man that they _chose_ for her to marry?

She took another sip of her drink and forced herself to look away from Evan.

"Divya!"

Startled, Divya looked up to see the friendly face of Jill, smiling down at her before taking the empty seat opposite her. She gave her a smile and watched as Jill's glass clanked gently on the table.

"Hey, Jill." Divya smiled pleasantly at her. She had just started to become rather good friends with the brunette, and was glad to spend some time with her outside the hospital.

"Isn't this party just wonderful?" Jill asked sarcastically with a roll of her eyes.

Divya snorted at that unexpected statement. "Yes, it _is_ rather boring."

"Why'd you decide to come, Miss Katdare?"

She looked at the doctor with a slight smile before motioning over to Hank and then over at Evan. "Them, obviously."

Jill smiled at her, laughing slightly as she watched Hank deftly avoid some flirty redhead with a charming grin and his fingers scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. Evan was looking like the blonde had leprosy for all the attention he was showing her, but she just wouldn't leave him alone.

"Geez, you'd think that girl would get the hint," Jill said with a rough laugh, knocking back a few more gulps of her drink.

Divya started, looking at Jill with curious dark eyes. "What?"

"That girl - the blonde that Evan is talking to."

"Hm." Divya dismissed it by drinking from her lemon water.

"He can't stop looking over here, you know," Jill said, nudging Divya's shoulder lightly. "Every time he gets the chance."

Divya snorted. "That's ridiculous."

"Ridiculous, but true," Jill murmured.

"Is this why you came over here?" Divya smirked slightly, looking at her friend with a playful stare. "To harass me about Evan?"

"You look like you want to be harassed by Evan." Jill waggled her eyebrows, and Divya felt a blush streak her cheeks.

"Jill!"

"Oh come on," Jill said, smiling. "You haven't noticed it?"

"Noticed what?"

"You have some serious sexual tension crackling over there with Evan R. Lawson."

Divya spit out her drink.

"Hank and I have both realized it. You know the fighting is just a substitute for the actual act."

Divya began coughing violently.

"Because Evan wants to _jump your boooonesss_."

Divya smacked Jill on the arm.

"How many drinks have you had?" she asked Jill, glaring menacingly at the drink in her hand, hoping that she could pass this event off as some kind of intoxicated mistake.

"Just the one." Jill grinned impishly.

"So you're just saying all of this because you want to freak me out?"

"Nah." Jill swirled the liquid in her drink around and around, and she looked at it as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. "Just so you know what's so obvious to all of us."

Divya scoffed, leaning forward on her elbow and looking down at her own water. "This is all so completely random…"

"Not really," Jill said, smiling. "I saw the way you were looking at Evan over there. Like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. So I decided to go enlighten you a bit. Because Evan wants you just as much as you want him."

_Too bad I can't do anything about it,_ Divya thought back to Raj and felt her muscles stiffen.

"You know you don't have to marry him," Jill said, out of the blue. It was like this woman was reading her thoughts. She felt like she was going insane.

"I do," Divya said, her shoulders feeling as if they'd had a lead weight dropped on them all of a sudden.

If only it could be that easy. If only she could just go up to Evan and do all the things that she'd been thinking about for the longest time. But it wasn't that simple, that careless. She had to think about Raj, and about the acceptance she'd gain from her family by doing so.

But that wasn't what marriage is supposed to be like, is it?

She grunted to herself, and looked over to Evan, who was looking pleadingly at her. As if she could do something to go save him from the blonde who was looking increasingly psychotic by the minute. Divya sighed as she lifted herself from the table, and looked at Jill. "Divya saves the day."

Jill smiled at her, and her blue eyes held a note of sadness. "As always."

Striding over to the bar with confidence, Divya watched Evan's face turn into a mask of gratitude and happiness, while the blonde girl was just chattering away, not even noticing his preoccupation.

Shoving a hand decisively into Evan's pocket, Divya turned to the blonde girl. "Well, what do we have here?"

"Hey, sweetheart!" Evan said reflexively, and Divya felt a shiver go through her at how natural that sounded when directed at her.

"What do you want?" The blonde looked at Divya as if she were the bane of her existence. Her face was caked with layers and layers of makeup, and her small eyes, outlined in thick mascara, glared at her - or what Divya thought would be classified as glaring, she couldn't really tell.

"Nothing. Just wondering what had gotten my boyfriend so utterly _frightened_ ," Divya said with a tinge of faux innocence. "Are you okay, Evan?"

"Well, _now_ I'm perfectly fine," Evan said, his voice thick like honey, and just as sweet.

Divya gave him a smile that would make several men fall to the ground and worship her, while the blonde looked on in what could only be described as horror.

"But…don't you want to dance with me, Evan!" the blonde screeched, shattering several eardrums. "That's what I've been trying to get you to do for the past twenty minutes."

"Well, if it took you that long, I don't think he wants to dance with you, sweetie," Divya said in that wonderfully condescending tone of hers. She wanted ferociously to get under this chick's skin, and it was working beautifully.

"Shut up! You don't know anything!" she screamed, and then pouted like she was ten years old and her mother had just taken away her favorite toy.

"I know what is in Evan's best interests," Divya said offhandedly. "And I believe it isn't you."

She heard Evan stifle a laugh beside her, and felt the slight rumbling in his chest as the laughter built.

The blonde looked appalled, staring blankly at the two people in front of her, before she turned around and stomped off in a huff. Divya stared in astonishment after her, and Evan chose that moment to burst into uncontrollable laughter, shaking them both with the movement of his shoulders and chest. She found herself laughing as well, unable to stifle the giggles.

"Well, that was certainly something," Divya said after a while of pleasant chuckling. "How did you manage to do _that_?"

"The Lawson charm…" Evan trailed off wistfully. "Many a girl has succumbed, and some of them are crazier than others."

"Most of them must be crazy to fall for that," Divya jabbed, smiling at him. _Including me._

Evan laughed slightly as the music changed from an up-tempo beat to a slower, subdued song. Couples dragged their significant other out onto the dance floor that had been moved outside to accommodate all of the people, and they started swaying to the beat, wrapped around each other intimately.

"Alright, then. I'm going to go finish my drink," Divya said, feeling the awkward tension between the two of them.

"Wait."

Evan's voice penetrated the clouded fog of her mind, his hand burning on her wrist.

"What is it?"

"Dance with me," Evan suggested nonchalantly, as if it were the most casual of requests, when in reality, Divya felt the weight of his words.

"I'm not that good of a dancer."

Evan smiled at her, and she felt her chest constrict. "All we have to do is practically stand there and sway back and forth. Ya know, like trees."

"Trees. Right." Divya looked skeptically at him, her eyebrows raised, as she prepared to walk back to her table.

"Oh, come on, Divs," Evan said, and she was shocked at the pleading in his voice. Then again, she shouldn't be. Evan had a magical way of guilting her into doing things, and this seemed to be no different.

"Why?"

"'Cuz I want you to dance with me." Again, it was like Evan thought she knew all of these answers herself.

But there was also such an earnest way that he said it that made Divya want to do it, even though she wasn't technically the most coordinated person in the world. She sighed, feeling defeated. Evan could be awfully stubborn when he wanted to be, and she felt that this would be one of those cases.

"Fine." Divya let out in an exasperated sigh, but on the inside, she felt the thrilling exhilaration that came with letting Evan anywhere near her. It was foolish, she knew - after all, she was marrying Raj - but she couldn't keep it from happening. Couldn't keep that foolish schoolgirl at bay.

Evan's hand felt like it could physically burn her as she was guided over to the dance floor. The music was soft and melodic, caressing her ears in a pleasant way, while Evan's hands rested on her waist, encircling around her hips just so. She wrapped her long arms around his neck, trying not to feel too awkward about the situation.

He pulled her close, closer than she'd ever been with him before - unless you count the infamous Kiss they had shared when she was trying to save him from a beating - and she felt the rhythm of his heartbeat.

The awkwardness she was expecting never came.

Everything felt completely, amazingly _right._

His hands on her waist, his chin resting against the top of her head. His light breath against her hair. The _thud, thud, thud_ of his heart. The way they fit against each other, impossibly perfect in every way. 

The whole situation made her heart ache. 

She wasn't sure what to do. That was the story of her life, when she thought about it. The most certain thing she'd ever thought was that she wanted to go into the medical field, and now that she had that and all of her career plans in check for now, there was something inexplicably missing. The sense of companionship and the sense of belonging. The sense of being _loved._

It was something that she didn't feel when she was around Raj. She tried - oh, she tried her _hardest_ to feel _something_ for him, but it never happened. It was always the same thing she felt around him. Friendship. Nothing more, nothing less. 

But this… _this_. 

This with Evan, right now, in this moment, was the closest she'd felt to having what she wanted. 

Her chest gave a painful thud as she pressed herself tighter against him, and felt his arms tighten around her in return. 

Somehow, she didn't know exactly how, but she knew that Evan felt the warring state her mind was in. 

In response, his lips pressed gently against the crown of her forehead. It was enough to make Divya want to cry and scream and deny everything that she had promised Raj, promised her parents, promised _herself_. Because at that moment, she wanted Evan more than anything else she had ever granted herself the pleasure of wanting. She felt it so deeply in her bones that it almost scared her, and Evan pulled her closer, knowing what she was going through. It was amazing, the fact that Evan could be so immature and careless, but now he was _comforting_ her. He was so intuitive, he knew what she was going through, and that was almost enough for her. 

_Almost._

The very thing that would make this perfect is if they could head home together, and lose themselves in one another. Then wake up and do it all over again. Be normal. Be boyfriend and girlfriend, like some stupid high school cliché. Then, when the time was right and everything was so perfect she couldn't stand it, then Evan would propose, and it would be out of love. Not out of duty. Not because her parents deemed it so. 

Clenching her eyes tightly shut, she nuzzled herself into Evan's chest, ignoring the eyes she knew were on them - Hank and Jill, no doubt. She ignored that, but she couldn't ignore the raging emotions that were fighting inside her. 

She was confused now more than ever. 

This felt so right, then how could it be wrong? How could she allow herself to go through with something that didn't feel right by her standards, and pass this up? She was so uncertain about everything that she was feeling that she didn't know how to separate it properly. 

The only thing she was certain of was this moment - Evan's arms holding her tightly to his chest as they swayed to the dulcet tones of the music around them. 


End file.
